ical history in a
way which would be of interest both to the public and to the profession.
In order to best illustrate the history of the healing art, he divided
his subject matter into five provisional classifications according to
the _Report upon the Condition and Progress of the U.S. National Museum_
during 1898:

1. Magical medicine including exorcism, amulets, talismans,
fetishes and incantation;

2. Psychical medicine including faith cures, and hypnotism;

3. Physical and external medicine including baths, exercise,
electricity, massage, surgery, cautery, and blood-letting;

4. Internal medicine including medications and treatment used by
the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus, Arabians, and Chinese;
and

5. Preventive medicine including beverages, food, soil, clothing
and habitation.

It is certainly to Dr. Flint's credit that from its early conception,
first as Section of Materia Medica and thereafter as Division of
Medicine, he planned for an all-embracing exhibition and reference
collection of the medical sciences. Until the end of the 19th century
and the early years of the 20th century, crude drugs as well as
primitive and magic medicine held a more prominent place than medical
instruments in the exhibits and collections. In 1905, Flint issued his
last, known, literary contribution, "Directions for Collecting
Information and Objects Illustrating the History of Medicine," in Part S
of _Bulletin of the U.S. National Museum_, no. 39. The emphasis he put
upon this shows Dr. Flint's interest in collecting medical and
pharmaceutical objects and equipment of historical value. Consequently,
he arranged new exhibits including one on American Indian medicine. A
medical historian, Fielding H. Garrison, inspected these about 1910 and,
in his "An Introduction to the History of Medicine," wrote of their
novelty and appeal. "In the interesting exhibit of folk medicine in the
National Museum at Washington," he commented, "a buckeye or horse
chestnut (_Aesculus flavus_), an Irish potato, a rabbit's foot, a
leather strap previously worn by a horse, and a carbon from an arc light
are shown as sovereign charms against rheumatism. Other amulets in the
Washington exhibit," he added, "are the patella of a sheep and a ring
made out of a coffin nail (dug out of a graveyard) for cramps and
epilepsy, a peony root to be carried in the pocket against insanity, and
rare and precious stones f